Expenditure Update: August 13

In a perfect world, I would be working a 15 hour work week in a job I love and take pride in. Productivity would be sky high and I will still be justifying a salary of $3k to $5k, even though I work so much less. And instead of gorging myself fat at restaurants or spending my still hard-earned money at malls, the leisure time is spent having fun with friends/relatives in my home or better still, outdoors.

Okok, I know I am being a little greedy here. Why not let’s restrict the perfect world imagination to this blog instead. Ideally, I would only be spending an hour to churn out one quality post and my readers would increase geometrically until it penetrates the entire Singapore population in a year’s time.

It also follows naturally that in the first month of reporting expenses to my growing blogging audience, I am able to portray myself as one lean, mean and frugal saving machine.

Yes, we have arrived in September and you shall be the judge on whether this machine is indeed lean or perhaps, more fatty than you expected. After showing you our fixed expenses a few days ago, here’s the breakdown of our discretionary expenses for the previous month:

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Eating Out: $597

Besides knowing where the money went, it should also help us to monitor if we had indeed eaten healthily for the past month. Therefore, we divided this category into 3 subsections: Hawker, Fast Food & Restaurants.

Hawker ($267) – Meals spent at food courts/centres are also accounted here, since they are also pretty inexpensive. This amount is pretty alright considering both of us eat out for lunch on weekdays. Furthermore, we don’t cook every night. Cai peng is the most common entry.

Fast Food ($32.25) – 2 meals for the lady and 5 for me (1 subway). We are both fast food fans. My wife is a sucker for those MacDonald French Fries whereas I love to wash down the burgers with soft drinks. This is a pretty good start since we are both trying to cut down on fast food, especially ever since I came to the realisation that Coke is something that is just slightly less toxic than drain cleaners. Urgh…

Restaurants ($297.80) – This is a huge amount, largely due to the birthday treat we gave to my sister. We spent $165 on a lunch buffet for 4. You could see we really made some effort to reduce expenses for this month since there were no records of Ding Tai Fung or Sushi Tei.  😉

Groceries: $479.95

Supermarket ($350.60) – This is another huge amount. Once every half a year or so, we would visit Giant to purchase items like detergent, washing powder and other heavy and bulky items. We would spend above $200 to qualify for the free delivery and unfortunately, our supplies were running out in August.

Wet Market ($64.80) – We generally visit the wet market for fresh produce like fish and chicken on a weekend and try to cook on Monday and Tuesday nights when the produce are still relatively fresh.

Baking Supplies ($64.85) – This is a big hobby of my wife. It gives her something interesting to do at home while I am typing out these posts to you. She’s making cakes, muffins and cupcakes almost every week. And Phoon Huat’s her new favourite hangout where one can grab some cheap baking supplies.

Beverages & Snacks: $26.10

The occasional sugar cane juice, bubble tea and a Tuesday waffle treat at Gelare.

Utilities: $165.73

Electricity, Gas & Water ($107) – I think this is pretty acceptable for a 5-room flat. We try to use the fan instead of turning on the air conditioner when we sleep, rely on the clothes hanger instead of a dryer and have a habit of switching off lights/appliances when they are no longer in use.

Cellphones ($58.73) – Two M1 iPhone Value+ plans. This number should be much lower but too bad we don’t include the revenue from phones sold as stated in our cell phone ownership strategy.

Transport: $170.60

It’s too much hassle to tabulate the daily costs. Instead, it’s the 2 EZ Reload top-ups for her and one for me that’s recorded. Mine is lower since I exit the train station before 7:45am and qualify for free transport to work. One cab trip that costs $20.60 is included this month too.

Insurance/Medical: $160

We visited the dentist this month and both of us had fillings done. $110 each but I had some subsidies from my company.

Miscellaneous: $132.50

An ang bao for my sis, some donations to colleagues and items for the 7th Lunar Month.

Total: $1,731.88

Final Total: $3,701.88 (included fixed expenses of $1,970)

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First time we are recording both of our expenses after moving into our new place and it’s $3,700 in total. That seems pretty fair. In fact, it’s actually within the expenditure target of $50,000 in a year. Furthermore, there were some one-off expenses like my sis’s birthday and the huge amount spent at Giant. In spite of this, the target was still met! Woohoo!

But that’s actually an illusion since we haven’t budgeted for travel, which could easily cost a few thousands for both of us. Moreover, I suspect that every month, there would be its fair share of large one-off expenses. Therefore, a fairer but loftier target would be $3,500/month, especially since we have intentions to lower the expenditure target to $40,000 a year too once we start our 15 hour work weeks.

It’s too early to draw any conclusions or impose any restrictions (wife is heaving a sigh of relief) since we are only at the first month. We shall continue monitoring and we hope to see you here next month too!

 

12 Replies to “Expenditure Update: August 13”

  1. Hi Hww

    Great tabulated expenses you hv there.

    I happen to calculate my expenses for the month of aug with my wife as well and we are happy that we managed to spend less than our budget of $1400 in the month. Do you have any budget in particular or part of the sections which you think you cam cut down?

    1. Hi B,

      Wow, less than $1,400. Your are one frugal couple.

      Groceries and the money spent eating out seems a bit high to me but we shall monitor for another month before implementing any cutting back measures.

  2. First time really get a feel of Heart lander expenses documented. Quite interesting IMO.

    Have you consider to include items such as depreciating fixed assets like car, TV, Notebook, Furniture etc ?

    Another comment i have is the insurance amount in Fixed Assets seem low for two.

    1. Hi Cory,

      Haha, yes, I am a Heartlander at heart.

      We don’t have a car (and not planning to have one anytime soon). Since we also just moved in, most of the electronics and furniture are pretty new. Even if we amortize them, these items should also not be taking up more than $2-$3k a year?

      Yes, the amount we spend on insurance is pretty low since we have no dependents currently. I do have some strong views on this area and will be drafting something up to share soon.

  3. Hi guys,

    Wow, you all spend so little as a couple, haha! My total expenses alone (fixed and variable all in) is already $3500 (rounded to a nice number). I don’t measure my wife’s expenses. I think each person should monitor their own expenses. This had been true since I started monitoring my expenses when I moved over to my own house instead of living with my parents. I split all the shared expenses almost equally with my wife to derive the 3.5k expenses.

    I think the main difference is I had a super expensive mortgage (1k each, 2k total), I don’t have cpf so it’s all cash payment for me. The other thing that bumped up is my car installment (180 each, 360 total) and some fuel cost.

    Not a single shred of regrets for my expenses though, haha! And none that I would reduce.

    1. Hi LP,

      Yes, in a perfect world, my wife would be monitoring her own expenses. But since recording would cause her to restrict her expenditure and make herself miserable, I have taken over for her portion too. It’s not too difficult since we spend most of our free time together too.

      On a separate note, your car payments appear very reasonable!

      1. Oh, mine is a pre owned car. Cost 32k, of which I paid half in downpayment and spread the rest over 5 yrs. Pretty affordable indeed 😉 more for the wife than myself though haha… The things we do for our significant other.

  4. Hello young warrior,

    I’ve heard in finance that beyond a certain breakeven point, an extra dollar earned will go straight to the P&L 😉

    Saving a dollar is important.

    Ability to find that extra $1 is what makes dreams possible.

    Have fun!

    1. Hi SMOL,

      Let’s see if I got your point.

      We are actually still experimenting and trying to reduce our expenses to find out what we can actually do without/reduce that will not affect our utility/happiness. Hopefully, we can reach a stage where we will be living our life this way/spending this much, regardless of our income. So finding that extra $1 might not be that important?

      Reducing some of the luxuries in life (i.e restaurants, hot showers, air conditioner) might appear like some cruel deprivation when we can afford it? However, I see it quite differently. When we limit these stuff, besides ensuring that we are not addicted to them (would not be anxious when we can’t access these stuff), we are also likely to appreciate them even more on those rare occasions when we indulge. It’s good for strengthening resolve and character, too!

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